Sydney's Journalism Piece on Same-Sex Marriage Featuring Us!

Quick recap, our friend Sydney asked us if we'd like to be a part of a journalism project for school and we agreed.  She came over Sunday night to interview us and it was pretty neat.  Yesterday she messaged us the link to her final project and I've gotten permission to post it here on my blog.  It's a short piece (1:21) about Utah's shifting views on same-sex marriage and we're in it at the end.  She said she originally turned in a slightly longer version that contained more of our interview, but her professor's TA kept insisting she edit the piece down.  She's not entirely happy with the cut-down version, but Brian and I still thought it was pretty dang cool.

Spring Awakening

Jaron Barney embraces Jackie Jensen and Dylan MacDonald while Bob Nelson and Sarah Shippobotham look on.

Tonight Brian and I went to see a production of Spring Awakening at the University of Utah's Babcock Theater.  If you've never heard of it, shame on you because it's brilliant!  It's my favorite musical.  I sing the songs in the shower probably every day.  Don't judge.  If you knew the music, then you would know why I obsess.  It's incredibly lyrical and haunting and just plain fantastic.

Based on a banned novel written in 1891, Spring Awakening is about sexual awakening amongst young people in a provincial German town.  The book was banned because of its depictions of teenage sexuality, masturbation, rape, sexual abuse, homosexuality... you name it.  Anyway, the show is tragic and yet reaffirming all at the same time.  I just love it.

My favorite songs are "Touch Me" and "Don't Do Sadness," but really they are all amazing.  Brian cries every time he hears "The Song of Purple Summer." Tonight was no exception to that rule.  The cast did the show justice, especially leads Jaron Barney, Jackie Jensen and Dylan MacDonald.  For those who live in the area, I suggest going!

Popomology

Tonight was the night!  Popomology, the launch party of the university's literary criticism journal Essais, was tonight at 7:00 in one of campus' conference rooms.  As one of the published authors, I was invited to give a presentation on my paper.  Apparently not all of the authors published were asked to speak, so I suppose I should feel pretty honored for having been asked.  As I was preparing my slideshow last night and writing index cards this afternoon, it didn't feel so much like an honor.  It felt like stress.  And as I sat there eating the catered dinner, waiting for my turn to get up and speak, it felt like anxiety.  But as luck would have it, my body didn't tremor and my voice didn't quake when it came time to speak.  I was the second presenter of the second panel, and I did pretty darn well.  Afterwards, I felt completely relieved.  And when it came time for the Q&A portion, my good luck continued and I answered questions in a fairly intelligent manner!

So, now that it's all over and I have a certificate to prove it, I feel honored.  Honored and grateful for having been published alongside some fantastic and compelling essays.  My essay, "The Theatricality of Truth in Kafka's The Trial," was one of four published essays on the same novel.  We were all in the same English 3090 class.  My paper focuses on allusions to theater that I found in the novel and how those instances argue for a post-structuralist reading of the text, asserting that truth is elusive and our presumed reality is a pretense.  Maybe someday I'll post it up here... but I might not be able to now that it's published.  Hmm.

Anyway, the night was a success and I'm happy I participated.

John Steinbeck Quotes

As my John Steinbeck class ends, my teacher has asked us to compile a few of our favorite quotes from each of the novels we've read.  I've decided to post them here to perhaps inspire those of you who've never read him to do so!

Tortilla Flat

“‘Thou knowest not what bitches women are,’ Danny said wisely.”—pg. 17

“‘Happiness is better than riches,’ said Pilon.”—pg. 77

“She was a lady, and her conduct was governed by very strict rules of propriety.  If Danny should walk by, now, if they should talk, like the old friends they were, if he should come in for a social glass of wine; and then, if nature proved too strong, and her feminine resistance too weak, there was no grave breach of propriety.  But it was unthinkable to leave her web on the front gate.”—pg.83

“‘I like it,’ said Pablo.  ‘I like it because it hasn’t any meaning you can see, and still it does seem to mean something, I can’t tell what.”—pg.140.

“A little love is like a little wine.  Too much of either will make a man sick.”—pg. 143

Of Mice and Men

“Maybe ever’body in the whole damn world is scared of each other.”—pg. 32

“‘He’s a nice fella,’ said Slim.  ‘Guy don’t need no sense to be a nice fella.  Seems to me sometimes it jus’ works the other way around.  Take a real smart guy and he ain’t hardly ever a nice fella.’”—pg. 38

“Lennie said softly, ‘We could live offa the fatta the lan’.’”—pg. 54

“‘You… an’ me.  Ever’body gonna be nice to you.  Ain’t gonna be no more trouble.  Nobody gonna hurt nobody nor steal from ‘em.’

Lennie said, ‘I thought you was mad at me, George.’

‘No,’ said George. “No, Lennie.  I ain’t mad.  I never been mad, an’ I ain’t now.  That’s a thing I want ya to know.’”—pg. 101

The Grapes of Wrath

“The hell with it!  There ain’t no sin and there ain’t no virtue.  There’s just stuff people do.  It’s all part of the same thing.  And some of the things folks do is nice, and some ain’t nice, but that’s as far as any man got a right to say.”—pg. 23

“This here ol’ man just’ lived a life an’ jus’ died out of it.  I don’ know whether he was good or bad, but that don’t matter much.  He was alive, an’ that’s what matters. […] An’ I wouldn’ pray for a ol’ fella that’s dead.  He’s awright.  He got a job to do, but it’s all laid out for ‘im an’ there’s on’y one way to do it.  But us, we got a job to do, an’ they’s a thousan’ ways, an’ we don’ know which way to turn.”—pg. 144

“This you may say of man—when theories change and crash, when schools, philosophies, when narrow dark alleys of thought, national, religious, economic, grow and disintegrate, man reaches, stumbles forward, painfully, mistakenly sometimes.  Having stepped forward, he may slip back, but only half a step, never the full step back.  This you may say and know it and know it.”—pg. 150

“‘Easy,’ she said.  ‘You got to have patience.  Why, Tom—us people will go on livin’ when all them people is gone.  Why, Tom, we’re the people that live.  They ain’t gonna wipe us out.  Why, we’re the people—we go on.’”—pg. 280

“In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.”—pg. 349

East of Eden

“Maybe we all have in us a secret pond where evil and ugly things germinate and grow strong.  But this culture is fenced, and the swimming brood climbs up only to fall back.  Might it not be that in the dark pools of some men the evil grows strong enough to wriggle over the fence and swim free?  Would not such a man be our monster, and are we not related to him in our hidden water?  It would be absurd if we did not understand both angels and devils, since we invented them.”—pg. 132

“The greatest terror a child can have is that he is not loved, and rejection is the hell he fears.  I think everyone in the world to a large or small extent has felt rejection.  And with rejection comes anger, and with anger some kind of crime in revenge for the rejection, and with the crime guilt—and there is the story of mankind.”—pg. 268

“This is not theology.  I have no bent toward gods.  But I have a new love for that glittering instrument, the human soul.  It is a lovely and unique thing in the universe.  It is always attacked and never destroyed—because ‘Thou mayest.’”—pg. 302

“It is true that we are weak and sick and quarrelsome, but if that is all we ever were, we would, millenniums ago, have disappeared from the face of the earth.”—pg. 307

“In uncertainty I am certain that underneath their topmost layers of frailty men want to be good and want to be loved.  Indeed, most of their vices are attempted short cuts to love. […] And it occurs to me that evil must constantly respawn, while good, while virtue, is immortal.  Vice has always a fresh young face, while virtue is venerable as nothing else in the world is.”—pgs. 412-413

The Pearl

“And this was part of the family song too.  Sometimes it rose to an aching chord that caught the throat, saying this is safety, this is warmth, this is the Whole.”—pg. 5

“Every man suddenly became related to Kino’s pearl, and Kino’s pearl went into the dreams, the speculations, the schemes, the plans, the futures, the wishes, the needs, the lusts, the hungers, of everyone, and only one person stood in the way and that was Kino, so that he became curiously every man’s enemy.”—pg. 23

“A plan is a real thing, and things projected are experienced.  A plan once made and visualized becomes a reality along with other realities—never to be destroyed but easily to be attacked.”—pg. 28

“Sometimes the quality of woman, the reason, the caution, the sense of preservation, could cut through Kino’s manness and save them all.”—pg. 59

“The people say that the two seemed to be removed from human experience; that they had gone through pain and had come out on the other side; that there was almost a magical protection about them.”—pg. 85

The Winter of Our Discontent

“Can a man think out his life, or must he just tag along?”—pg. 36

“And I remember thinking what a hell of a man a man could become.”—pg. 65

“I think I believe that a man is changing all the time.  But there are certain moments when the change becomes noticeable.”—pg. 87

“Has sin gone on strike for a wage raise?”—pg. 275

“It isn’t true that there’s a community of light, a bonfire of the world.  Everyone carries his own, his lonely own.  […] My light is out.  There’s nothing blacker than a wick.”—pg. 279

Travels with Charley

“For I have always lived violently, drunk hugely, eaten to much or not at all, slept around the clock or missed two nights of sleeping, worked too hard and too long in glory, or slobbed for a time in utter laziness.  I’ve lifted, pulled, chopped, climbed, made love with joy and taken my hangovers as a consequence, not as a punishment.  I did not want to surrender fierencess…”—pg. 13

“For how can one know color in perpetual green, and what good is warmth without cold to give it sweetness?”—pg. 25

“Yellowstone National Park is no more representative of America than is Disneyland.”—pg. 117

“I wonder why progress looks so much like destruction.”—pg. 132

“Officer, I’ve driven this thing all over the country—mountains, plains, desserts.  And now I’m back in my own town, where I live—and I’m lost.”—pg. 202

Shocked by a Stranger

Buzzing along the conduit of electricity that is our hallway system at UVU, I was shocked when a comment was directed at me.

"Hey, I saw you earlier."

Quickly redirecting and reprogramming, my mind switching from look-down-keep-moving mode to acknowledge-fellow-human-being mode, I turned to take in the speaker.  He was a guy roughly my age and height, latino, and a complete stranger.

"Oh," I said dumbly.  "Hey."  I rejoined the traffic stream of bright-minded college students, but a quick glance to my left found that he had too.

Matching my speed, he continued, "You were walking in the hall.  A few hours ago."

"Oh."

"Do you always have class this late?"

"Yeah, I'm on campus until  6:45 usually.  Get here at 11:30."

"Oh neat.  What are you studying?"

Pausing slightly to wait for a gap, we turned left at the corner and entered another hallway, this one less populated.

"I'm an English major," I said.

"Spanish Education."  He smiled as he said it.  His teeth, flashing like a beacon, were perfect.

"K, well, I'm heading this way," I said, turning abruptly into a side hall.

"Oh... See you around!" he called after me.

I had no need for the hallway I took and after waiting a reasonable amount of time, I reversed my direction and came out the way I came.  Some more reprogramming was necessary, so I shook my head, pulled out my phone and sent my husband, Brian, a message.

"I love you, honey.  Moomoos."

And sensing my need for a response, he replied seconds later.

"I love you too."

Then I lost service in the winding underbelly of campus.

Limon=Lemon

"Your last name, Limon, it means lemon, right?"

"No," says Zeek.  "It means lime."

"Isn't that lima?" I ask him.

"I'm Mexican; I would know."

I'm pretty sure I'm right, but I let it slide.  At the Mexican restaurant, days later, Tara brings it up again, smiling coyly over her margarita.  The margaritas there are pretty strong, and that's mostly why we go, although I enjoy my pork and bean burrito.  The service is pretty good too.  The waitress smiles warmly and puts her hand on my shoulder.  "Weren't you just here on Saturday?" she asks.  Wow, she even remembers us... and yes, yes we were.

Meanwhile, Zeek's cheeks are flushing.  "You guys are wrong!  It means lime."

"Then how do you say lemon in Spanish?" Tara asks.

"Lemon," says Zeek, laughing, licking the salted rim of his glass.

As we tipsily pay our check, I say to the waitress, "Can I ask you a question?  How do you say lemon in Spanish?"

"It's limon," she says.

"Told ya so!" Tara and I both shout out to Zeek, turning to smack him but hitting each other instead.

"Where did he go?" she asks.  "He was right here!"

Zeek reappears a second later, he had returned to the table to leave a tip and perhaps mourn the fact that I was right and he was wrong.  Zeek's last name, like the car he drives, means lemon.

Stage Fright

Sydney came over after all and we had a great time.  She shot some footage of Brian and I in the kitchen (Brian gave me the simple task of washing vegetables) and then we sat on the couch and she asked us a few questions.  Brian did most of the talking of course.  I just nodded a lot and acted uncomfortable.  Stupid camera.  And when I did speak, I sounded like a rambling fool.  Luckily the project she's working on is only a minute and a half, because I'm not quite ready for my Barbara Walters interview.

She ended up staying a little longer than planned, saying goodbye several times before inevitably settling back in again.  Good conversation has that effect on people.  We talked about movie musicals and politics and religion... but mostly musicals.  We're agreed that Russell Crowe disappointed in Les Mis, we're excited for Anna Kendrick to be in The Last Five Years and on some level we all miss the theater.  I don't miss it as much as those two do, but I do sometimes miss it.

It's funny how as a child and teenager I was once able to sing and act onstage in front of people.  Nowadays, I get panic attacks from being called on to answer a question in class.  I shake like a leaf when giving a class presentation.  And I was sweating bullets as soon as Sydney set up her tripod and focused that camera on us.  Thursday I'll have to give a presentation in front of an estimated 80 or so people including the president of Utah Valley University and I am terrified.  Terrified.  I wonder whatever happened to the confident boy who used to perform.  I wonder if he's gone for good, or if he'll ever come back again.